Blu-ray: Dogged by delays, will it still have its day?

[HDTV1080P]

This article is a interesting read but it also talks about the negative history of problems the Blu-ray format has had over the last 4 years.

Color PDF version of article

http://www.edn.com/file/25491-Blu_ra...pdf?force=true

standard weblink version of article

http://www.edn.com/article/509888-Bl...e_its_day_.php

[ckenisell]

Sounds like a bitter HD-DVD owner. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Calling Blu-Ray a "failure". I guess ID10T's are born every second.

[kpkelley]

Originally Posted by ckenisell

Calling Blu-Ray a "failure".

Yeah, and he calls the XBox 360 a success(RROD anyone?) while touting Nintendo's paperweight and criticizing Sony's 3rd party titles? Has this guy even tried to play a 3rd party wii game(if he can find one)?

[jakeneff]

The title of the article alone is enough for me to know the writer doesn't know what he's talking about.

[Afrobean]

Blu-ray, which has been under development for almost a decade, has yet to hit its full stride.

Blu-ray has been available for four years. That's "almost a decade"? And "has yet to hit its full stride"? It's showing enormous growth... I think that's better than having peaked and leveled off... Especially since we've now seen a mainstream theatrical release sell over 50% during its first week of release while competing with a DVD edition.

How is it people like this are able to publish material like this on otherwise respectable looking websites? Does this EDN company have no qualms with publishing such blatant lies?

[Terjyn]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

Blu-ray has been available for four years. That's "almost a decade"?

He said developed, not released.

Blu-Ray has been in development since ~2000 (the name Blu-Ray came in early 2002).

Still, ridiculous blatant manipulation of the facts.

So sick of so-called "journalists".

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by ckenisell

Sounds like a bitter HD-DVD owner.

That pretty much sums it up. I bet you can find articles written by this guy that praises HD-DVD.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

He said developed, not released.

Blu-Ray has been in development since ~2000 (the name Blu-Ray came in early 2002).

I'd say the formation of the Blu-ray Disc Assocation was the real point of beginning of development. Prior to that, it was just a curious optical disc technology that wasn't immediately directed to what it would eventually become. That was 2004, I guess, when the founders of the Blu-ray tech regrouped into the BDA. If you go back to the early development of the conception of the tech rather than the beginning of standardization toward home video, why not go further back in time in regards to conception of the media, say to the beginning of optical disc tech in general back in the 70s? Yeah, it's taken optical discs 40 years to get to where Blu-ray is today, CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW TERRIBLE IT IS THAT IT'S TAKEN THIS LONG TO COME SO LITTLE?

:|

But Blu-ray is a software standard, and the problem the article names is lack of "maturity". That's a software "problem", it has nothing to do with the early work on the hardware side back in 2000. The conception of blue-violet lasers used similarly to red lasers as in DVDs might have first occured in 2000, but it took a lot of stuff from the initial conception to the software standard we see today that the guy has such a problem with.

That all said, you are right. I did misread what they said. Oops haha. But they're still full of crap regardless.

[Blu-ray Fanatic]

Blu-ray isn't going anywhere even with delays. Consumers who've adopted the format have plenty of patience and will wait a couple years just to get what they want. Blu-ray consumers are dedicated customers.

[Al_The_Strange]

Many of the world's greatest inventions have been dogged by delays. Look at all the trouble the world's first automobiles went through!

So what? Blu-Rays are still being pumped out, and customers are buying. Business is a boomin'!

[jbat31]

I definitely think blu is here to stay but man does it need to work on catalog titles. We are not getting more Bonds, Friday the 13th movies and other catalog titles because the ones released sold poorly. Granted MGMs mess is holding u p Bond, but they did say sales were disappointing. Last week, blu only got 9% market share. I know some weeks are better than others, but on average, it is only pulling about 14 percent on stronger weeks. After four years I am surprised. I do feel this guy is off track, but there are things that could be better.

[bluflu]

"Blu-ray: Dogged by delays."

Yeah, first two years were wasted battling Toshiba and HD DVD, plus Paramount single-handedly set the format back about six months. As far as I'm concerned, Blu-ray has only been on the scene for a little over two years. Now Blu-ray is accounting for more than 50% of some movie releases.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by jbat31

I definitely think blu is here to stay but man does it need to work on catalog titles. We are not getting more Bonds, Friday the 13th movies and other catalog titles because the ones released sold poorly. Granted MGMs mess is holding u p Bond, but they did say sales were disappointing. Last week, blu only got 9% market share. I know some weeks are better than others, but on average, it is only pulling about 14 percent on stronger weeks. After four years I am surprised. I do feel this guy is off track, but there are things that could be better.

That's INDUSTRY revenue. Look at where the most money per title is. Look at new releases. Look at the numbers THOSE titles are doing. For example, last week at The Losers at 51% and Cop Out at 38%. Has a comedy film ever had that high of a marketshare? I know an action flick has never had as high as 51% obviously, but it seems that people are overlooking the share Cop Out pulled down.

DVD just has WAY too many little titles that it overshadows BD even when BD does relatively well. Basically, the industry makes a lot more money by a CRAPLOAD of bargain bin titles with a small profit margin compared to selling many BDs with a large profit margin.

[bluflu]

There was approximately 160 new DVDs listed for sale this week at DVD Empire, compared to about 35 Blu-rays. Obviously Blu-ray isn't going to generate as much revenue as DVD. In the beginning Blu-ray had only one or two releases for some weeks.

http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_rec...&view=0&page=1

http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_rec...=7%2F27%2F2010

[bluflu]

The following site does an even better job at listing every new DVD released. There were 292 discs released for the week of 7/27/10, of which 33 were Blu-ray.

http://dvdlist.kazart.com/queryDVDLi...re&sort3by=ASC

http://dvdlist.kazart.com/queryDVDLi...re&sort3by=ASC

[blacklion]

Yup, the author sure is one heck of a bitter HD DVD owner. So lets just ignore him when he points out that the reasons why BD has not achieved its targets thus far include the following -

1. upscaling DVD players are good enough for most ordinary people.

2. consumers perceived the transition from VHS to DVD as offering a superior value proposition in terms of PQ, ease of use etc whereas most consumers do not have the set-up to fully appreciate BD's superior PQ and so cannot see the value proposition. Also, in this economy, many consumers don't think the superior PQ is worth paying premium over DVD.

Here's a nugget to reflect on -

The Blu-ray quagmire provides a compelling case study of the pitfalls of a short and narrow vision that adapts to neither history’s lessons nor today’s deviations. This flawed vision assumes that suppliers’ push will still ultimately triumph even without a substantial amount of customers’ pull.

[SillyMammo]

Blu Ray is overly complicated. I recently bought my first Blu Ray disc and tried to watch it on my PS3 unfortunatly it seemed the firmware on the PS3 was out of date and it needed to connect to the internet however my broadband was down at the time so I was stuffed. ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS WATCH A DAMN FILM IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK!!!! I've gone back to DVD's as I've never had a DVD player ask me to connect to the damn internet! Also there is plenty of free/cheap PC DVD player software but thats not the case with Blu Ray. I may still buy Blu Ray if I think the quality of the film merits it but not for run of the mill films.

I lack enthusiasm for any crippled-by-design product like blu-ray. Perhaps I don't want to have to continually update / replace my player as the newer movies come out. If I buy a copy of Avatar, I have the expectation that I should be able to simply pop it in & watch it. I want to use the product MY way. That means when I go to watch a movie, I can watch the movie. No tinkering. No updating the player. No unskippable ads. No fighting the DRM. I just want to watch the movie.

It's funny to see the two comments about how much of a hassle it is to update to new firmware. Welcome to 2010 fellas! Firmware updates and having an internet connection are becoming pretty common with many facets of life. If they think firmware updates are a problem, wait until they try digital downloading without an internet connection.

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by blacklion

Yup, the author sure is one heck of a bitter HD DVD owner. So lets just ignore him when he points out that the reasons why BD has not achieved its targets thus far include the following -

1. upscaling DVD players are good enough for most ordinary people.

2. consumers perceived the transition from VHS to DVD as offering a superior value proposition in terms of PQ, ease of use etc whereas most consumers do not have the set-up to fully appreciate BD's superior PQ and so cannot see the value proposition. Also, in this economy, many consumers don't think the superior PQ is worth paying premium over DVD.

Here's a nugget to reflect on -

Blu ray quagmire.

Btw, he's not being ignored because he's bitter, it's because he's pushing DD. Talk about underwhelming performance.

[Canada]

Upscaling DVD players created a pseudo-high-definition presentation that, to many consumers, was good enough and was cost-effective.

Upscaled DVD is junk compared to a true 1080p image , all upscaling does is try to create information that is not there.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by SillyMammo

It's funny to see the two comments about how much of a hassle it is to update to new firmware. Welcome to 2010 fellas! Firmware updates and having an internet connection are becoming pretty common with many facets of life. If they think firmware updates are a problem, wait until they try digital downloading without an internet connection.

Firmware updates aren't even needed. I have a Panasonic that's played hundreds of BDs without ever updating it, and it's never had ANY problem with ANY of them.

CD audio is usually superior to mp3 and SA-CD and DVD-A are clearly miles apart from mp3 yet iPods/iPhones/portable media players are perhaps the top selling consumer electronic products and the hi-res audio formats are almost dead.

Considering redbook audio is a lossless audio format with reasonably high resolution, I'd say you're totally wrong. Plenty of people buy audio CDs all of the time, and unless I'm mistaken, still makes up the majority of sales of albums. iTunes only outsells on SINGLES, but who cares how well single CDs sell? I never understood that concept anyway.

even the most enthusiastic advocates of DD know its still about a decade or so away from prime time.

A decade? Hah!

The majority of people have no interest in losing physical media. Some can deal with it or enjoy it in some cases (especially music, which many people just steal anyway), but most consumers are fearful of it. These people argue that putting a disc in a player and hitting play is too complicated, but they expect non-geeks to be able to handle soft digital distribution? They should do some tests some time and see which is easier for a typical consumer to set up and use: a BD player or a settop device that streams media over the Internet or from a networked home PC acting as a server. I didn't have any problem setting up my 360 to stream video files from my laptop over my wireless network, but I can't imagine most people see that task as being as easy as inserting a disc and pressing play. The problem with people trying to push downloads and streaming as the next big thing don't realize that most people don't live the way they do. There are still a LOT of people in the world without Internet connections, and they forget this. There are a LOT of people who just don't WANT to download things, and they forget this.

Basically, we need a "refresh" of people. Current population needs to grow old, die, and be replaced by yet-to-be-born generations. Then cloud-based soft digital distribution might be accepted by the mainstream for movie consumption. The great thing is that once that much time has passed, average consumers might finally be able to download at speeds meeting or exceeding BD's bitrate capacity... but there's still going to be the problem that every potential film-buying consumer might not have an Internet connection.